Follow by Email, Like Cool People Do

Search This Blog

Pages

Nerdery and the Dork Forest

I listen to a podcast called The Dork Forest, hosted by one of my favorite standup comedians, Jackie Kashian. She invites people on to talk about their dorkdom. A person's dorkdom can be anything they're just an extreme dork about: they don't have to have all the information or be an expert in that field; they just have to be a dork. As a result of this, almost every episode is fascinating, because even if you don't give a shit about photo booths, this one lady has dedicated her life to buying and restoring them, and who doesn't want a peek into that lady's life and why she is the way she is.Because I listen to this show a lot and because I dork out about a lot of things, I've taken some time in my life to ponder which dorkdom I would talk about if I were on The Dork Forest. What do I get the MOST intense about. Here are some contenders:Women's HistoryI mean. Come on. Yeah. Like someone's gonna talk to me for five minutes and NOT hear about Frances Willard and how her mission for the Women's Christian Temperance Union is misunderstood today. I managed to bring up this very topic on a date last week. Most dates don't turn out well, so why not use them as opportunities to spread the word.My Breyer Horse CollectionDid the fact I own 75 model horses cause some weirdness in my last relationship? Yes it did. Can I, at age 31, get rid of these horses -- these horses that don't even live with me, but instead reside at my parents' house? No, absolutely not. Those horses have color-coded families that I separated them into at age eight. Families and names and stories about how I got them. A part of my brain recognizes that someday when my parents leave their house, they will probably require me to move said horses, and while I definitely cannot be That Lady in Her 30s With the Model Horse Collection, I also cannot think of an alternative at the present time. Said brain will revisit this topic when the situation deems it necessary.

My collection is not as terrifying as this one

Femslash Ships"What are these words you're using?" I hear you ask, because you did not go to high school with me. Slash is a gay fictional pairing (from Kirk/Spock, and yes it is named after the conjunction) and femslash apparently needed its own term, so there we have it. Shipping is short for "relationshipping" and means you want two (or more) characters to end up together romantically. You might think, if you've had any interactions with a Tumblr Lesbian, that femslash ships are all over television, but they are in fact few and far between, so if you're in "the lesbian fandom," you know all of them -- even the ones you don't ship. My favorite tumblr post about this is:

I could EASILY talk for an hour about Xena/Gabrielle, Bering and Wells, Calzona, Swan Queen, Shoot, Rizzles, Bechloe, Hollstein, etc. And that's leaving out the giant teen ships like Clexa, Faberry, Brittana, Karmy, and whatever else the kids are into now. But anyway. Moving on.The X-FilesI was in the X-Files fandom when the internet was a tiny baby and pretty much the only shows people were talking about on it were X-Files, Buffy, and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. Do I have fandom in-jokes dating from 1998? Yes I do. I constantly forget how much information about X-Files 13-year-old me stored in her brain, but then I'll be talking with someone in a cursory way about the show and I hear myself say "Well, y'know, Vince Gilligan wrote that episode and that's why shippers made internet shrines to him." That's right, People Living in the Present Day. The creator of Breaking Bad only means anything to '90s XF fans because he was known as the writer who wanted Mulder & Scully to bang.Let's be honest, there's a lot more that could go on this list, but my and your attention spans are probably short, so let's cap it off at 4. Which of these would I be HAPPIEST talking about? You know what, I don't even know. And don't so easily dismiss the Breyer horses, because those are a sleeper interest of mine – meaning that if we get on the topic, my eyes will shine and I will tell you how I earned Secretariat's wife Cinnamon by doing laundry for my parents for eight hours (most of which consisted of me sleeping on piles of it in the laundry room).As heard on The Dork Forest, everyone's dorkdom is interesting, so be telling me yours please.

Get link

Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Other Apps

Get link

Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Other Apps

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Okay, people. Here it is. Where you sign up to read the entire Harry Potter series (or to reminisce fondly), starting January 2013, assuming we all survive the Mayan apocalypse. I don't think I'm even going to get to Tina and Bette's reunion on The L Word until after Christmas, so here's hopin'.

You guys know how this works. Sign up if you want to. If you're new to the blog, know that we are mostly not going to take this seriously. And when we do take it seriously, it's going to be all Monty Python quotes when we disagree on something like the other person's opinion on Draco Malfoy. So be prepared for your parents being likened to hamsters.

If you want to write lengthy, heartfelt essays, that is SWELL. But this is maybe not the readalong for you. It's gonna be more posts with this sort of thing:

We're starting Sorceror's/Philosopher's Stone January 4th. Posts will be on Fridays. The first post will be some sort of hilarious/awesome que…

Acclaimed (in England mostly) lady Caitlin Moran has a novel coming out. A NOVEL. Where before she has primarily stuck to essays. Curious as we obviously were about this, I and a group of bloggers are having a READALONG of said novel, probably rife with spoilers (maybe they don't really matter for this book, though, so you should totally still read my posts). This is all hosted/cared for/lovingly nursed to health by Emily at As the Crowe Flies (and Reads) because she has a lovely fancy job at an actual bookshop (Odyssey Books, where you can in fact pre-order this book and then feel delightful about yourself for helping an independent store). Emily and I have negotiated the wonders of Sri Lankan cuisine and wandered the Javits Center together. Would that I could drink with her more often than I have.

INTRODUCTION-wise (I might've tipped back a little something this evening, thus the constant asides), I am Alice. I enjoy the Pleistocene era of megafauna and drinking Shirley Templ…

24in48, where we try to read for 24 hours out of 48, has come and gone once more. I managed 13 hours, which considering my usual average is 2, is excellent and I will take it. I attribute this to genuine planning this time and a remarkable lack of things to do that weekend.

The Good.It was actually all pretty good, so I'm gonna give a quick recap so you can decide if it strikes your fancy or not.

The SummariesThe Witches: Salem, 1692. This is a breakdown of everything that happened before, during, and after the Salem witch trials of 1692. I loved the beginning because Stacy Schiff gives you a good idea of the awfulness of life in New England in the 17th century, and it also helps you understand how the trials happened, because everyth…